Lantern Festival celebrates Vietnamese community

Erica Reimer of San Diego laughs as she splashes down into a kiddy pool while encased in a plastic bubble at the San Diego Lantern Festival in City Heights. Blue Elephant Bubble Carnivale provided the game.
— John Gastaldo

Erica Reimer of San Diego laughs as she splashes down into a kiddy pool while encased in a plastic bubble at the San Diego Lantern Festival in City Heights. Blue Elephant Bubble Carnivale provided the game.
— John Gastaldo

San Diego Lantern Festival

When: 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday

Lanterns: Lit at sundown

Where: Hoover High School, 4474 El Cajon Blvd., San Diego, 92115

Tickets: Children $3; adults $5

Phone: (858) 880-7338

Online: sdlanternfestival.com

The weekend is called the San Diego Lantern Festival, but the hope is that the impression lasts well beyond Sunday. It’s part of an effort to turn a stretch of City Heights into a bustling, vibrant community known officially as Little Saigon.

“We feel like the Vietnamese people have been here, they have brought little Saigon with them,” said Frank Vuong, who co-heads the San Diego Little Saigon Foundation. “Little Saigon basically exists in their hearts, in their businesses, in their minds.”

Vuong, 33, said the lantern festival comes from the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival in Vietnam, a celebration of the harvest. It is considered the children’s new year, which traditionally includes kids carrying lanterns in Vietnam as part of the festivities.

The area around El Cajon Boulevard from Highland Avenue to Euclid Avenue is home to about 7,000 Vietnamese people, many settling here as refugees after the Vietnam War ended in 1975, Vuong said.

The lanterns surround carnival rides, food stands, and vendors. The event prompted Brian and Susmita Duncan of Eastlake to bring their daughter, Vesper, 3, to the festival on Saturday.

“I haven’t been to a lantern festival before, it’s something new,” Susmita said, noting her family has attended events on nearby Adams Avenue.

About 100 Vietnamese high school students from City Heights set up the event. Ann Huynh, 16, a resident of the area who attends Serra High School in Tierrasanta, was working one of the raffle booths. She said she has a hard time getting her friends to come visit because they have a misperception that the area is unsafe. That’s why she was glad to see people like the Duncans coming in from other parts of the county.

“This place is not known for being the best place but it’s really not as bad as people say. I enjoy living here,” she said. “For them to be enjoying it, that means a lot to me because that’s their first impression.”

Vuong, originally from Saigon, said the foundation earlier this year requested the area be officially designated Little Saigon Commercial and Cultural District from the San Diego City Council. It has not yet been formally considered. Vuong said he believes it will take that recognition to keep people from moving out of the area as soon as they become successful.

“We want to reverse that trend,” he said. “Infuse life into it, give people a chance for them to say, ‘Hey, I’m going to grow up here, I’m going to raise my kid here, have my kid go to Hoover High School,’ reinvest in their own community.”